Wednesday, March 18, 2009

What the Wizard of Oz Can Teach Us About The Economic Crisis

We’ve alluded to and written about this before, but here is the BBC News magazine’s Rumeana Jahangir on the original economic interpretation of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 vision, brought to the masses through the 1939 Judy Garland film, and brought to the world’s understanding in 1964 by high school teacher Henry Littlefield: “The Tin Woodman represents the industrial worker, the Scarecrow is the farmer and the Cowardly Lion is William Jennings Bryan.” - proof that high school teachers still have something to teach us. If you want the full blown postmodern critique, check out The Hang’d Man’s (aka the WWWiz) interpretation from our most wizardly Oz interpretation.